John Griff Column: Why Covid-19 might just determine the outcome of the US Presidential Election

It has been intriguing to note how our understanding of the events which have so shaped this year have perhaps changed with our familiarity of the pandemic.

I recall watching the first reports coming out of China at the start of the year as the then mysterious, virulent disease infected so many people and affected the lives of so many more.

At the time we were distanced from it all here, but not for long.

Stories of how the authorities were dealing with the outbreak and the speculation as to where it had first come from followed almost immediately and I recall thinking about how China and its response was being written up for western consumption.

Was it all true though? Did the Chinese authorities weld up access to some tower blocks to contain the spread of Covid-19 by incarcerating the inhabitants inside, as I saw reported? I cannot say – I wasn’t there to witness it myself.

Social historians will be able to comment on what happened in the decades which follow – and it may take decades for the reality to become apparent.

What is certainly true however, is how different countries have adopted different attitudes and procedures to Covid-19, from letting it follow its natural path and letting Darwinism decide the fate of those in its path, to the lockdowns that we saw and continue to see locally here at home.

But now things are changing. And I wonder if a somewhat cavalier approach to a virus which has killed over a million people worldwide is becoming the norm.

A few weeks ago the scientists came out to announce that Britain was seeing a worrying increase – an exponential one – in cases of coronavirus. Interestingly, it wasn’t accompanied by an exponential increase in deaths from the disease.

The scientists said that we had learned a great deal about how to treat Covid-19, but also made it very clear that we had to collectively change our behaviour in order to turn that increase in cases around.

I wrote in this column that we simply had to comply with what we were being told to do and I stand by that now.

The NHS and testing centre staff are still wrestling with the effects of the pandemic as those cases increase further but elsewhere, perhaps unsurprisingly, coronavirus seems to be being used to score points.

We are a limitlessly creative species. Businesses wanting to trade as close to normal as possible adjusted to coronavirus very quickly with the first ‘Covid-compliant’ TV adverts for the retail sector appearing on our screens within 48 hours of the first outbreak happening here.

It was a marvellous demonstration of resilience. But it is also within the human condition to seek to point the finger – ‘where there’s blame, there’s a claim’ being the old maxim.

Donald Trump went on the offensive, repeatedly calling out China for the rise of coronavirus while seemingly trivialising what coronavirus would do at home.

And now, within a month of the presidential election in the USA (the postal vote is already going on), POTUS himself has not only contracted the disease having declined to wear a protective mask, but, if it is to be believed, beaten the virus in a weekend.

Really? Did he ever have it? If he did, does he still have it, now risking the lives of others? Or is this media spin painting the picture of an apparently invincible 74-year-old desperate to become a two term president?

Covid-19 just might decide that one.